What-if?
by Raurenu
Summary: A "what really happened?" kind of fic. xeno-yaoi, and bart x fei, of course. What else would I write?


What-If  
by raurenu  
  
~  
Warning: This is yet another one of my shamelessly yaoi stories, starring Mr. Man-do-I-have-issues-not-so-reluctant-uke Fei, and the gorgeous pirate Bartholomew Fatima.  
  
chibi fei: I feel so degraded . . . T_T  
ren-chan: Ignore it- it's your public image. ^^  
  
~  
Note: This is one of those "what-if" stories. Like, what was Fei *really* thinking about when he wasn't drinking his tea? You know when Bart goes and talks to his desceased father on the tip of the Yggdrasil after Fei blows up about fighting, at the Pirates' Lair early in the game? I'm just guessing what would happen if the controller let you walk over to talk to him.  
  
~  
  
Now let's just get on with the story!  
  
~  
I woke up. As I fought to regain consciousness, I also struggled to remember where I was. Suddenly, I remembered: The pirates, the limestone cave, the boy called Bart in his flamboyant red Gear, Brigandier. And now I was aloft the Yggdrasil, the great sand cruiser.  
  
I rubbed my eyes sleepily, trying to take this all in.  
  
Citan entered the room. "Fei? Are you finally up?" I was too weary to manage more than a weak nod. Hell, I was tired. Anyone who had been through what I had just gone . . .  
  
Doc interrupted my thoughts. "We will be arriving at the Pirate's Lair soon. I suggest you go look around." he spoke in his regular, encouraging voice. Then he left, his business here finished. I decided then to take his advice.  
  
Foreign toned music twanged through the halls like a flowing Chinese dancer, and I wondered if anyone could hear it but me. Somehow, I made it to the Yggdrasil's bridge. And there was Bart again, with the silver tressed man called Sigurd, who kept referring to Bart as 'young master'. After all, so did everyone else on the ship.  
  
"Hiya Fei," Bart said half-heartedly, more concentrated on navigating the ship.  
  
"Feeling better?" Sigurd greeted, with a smile that older people give to the younger. "We should reach our destination any minute now."  
  
And so we did.   
  
As the Yggdrasil gave a final jolt of halting, the proper old man called Maison led us out and escorted Doc and me to the dining area. While we were leaving, I observed a crowd of children gather around Bart. Something about that boy intrigued me. They all seemed so happy, like the children of Lahan.  
  
Lahan.  
  
I shouldn't think of Lahan.  
  
When we got to the dining room, Maison poured us tea, and told us a long tale about how Bart was actually Bartholomew Fatima, heir to Aveh's throne and the Fatima Jasper, and was related to Mother Marguerite. I'm sure he talked about more than that, but I didn't pay attention to most of it. Just the parts about Bart. His life fascinated me, and how he could keep such a lighthearted attitude was beyond my thinking . . .  
  
"Fei? Do you not like my tea?" Maison inquired.  
  
I looked down at my full teacup.  
  
"No, it's not that," I said. "I'm just not thirsty right now." I finished lamely.  
  
As if on cue, Bart suddenly entered the room. He seemed to bring an aura of cheerfulness along with him. Some of the gloom that had settled inside me unlayered.  
  
I listened as he spoke to Maison in such a tone that you would have expected Maison to be a much closer friend than a teacher and butler. They went into something about Aveh picture scrolls, and then I remember walking into a room stocked with unbelievable technology and glass tiles on the floor.  
  
"Fei, you're standing on the screen. Get off or we won't be able to see!"  
  
Oh. Right. I backed away from the tiles. I felt like I was in my own little dream world, barely conscious of what was going on around me. I tried to snap out of it and study the images on the screen. Scrolls displaying a past culture, where giants conquered land and were put to rest after their labors.  
  
Prehistoric Gears.  
  
Gears. I jumped out of my dreamlike haze and realized the others were talking about Gears. And me.  
  
"I can't wait to put you in one and use your power," Bart was saying.  
  
I stared at him. I wonder if he saw the fear in my eyes just then. The jolts of memory flashing through my brain. I saw faces: the village people of Lahan, Alice, Dan. And what my "power" had done.   
  
Fear became anger. Use my power? How could he speak that way?   
  
"How dare you?" I demanded of him. "Use my power? Why does everyone want to make me fight? First Grahf, and now you!" From the puzzled expression on his face, I could tell that he probably didn't have any idea what "Grahf" person I was talking about. I didn't care.  
  
"Doesn't anyone care what I think?"  
  
I stormed out of the room, and heard the voices through the door.  
  
"Man, what's with him?" I heard Bart ask.  
  
"Let's just say he's been through a lot lately." Citan explained weakly.  
  
'Been through a lot' was an understatement. Even being rescued by these pirates had been hell. Heck, the only reason they *did* rescue us is when they shot down the Kislev ship taking us to the concentration camp and they saw a Gear they wanted.   
  
My Gear. Weltall. I ran to the hanger where he was kept, and stared up at his face. A countenance of cool power.   
  
"Why?" I asked Weltall, as if he were an all knowing guru, instead of some machine. The machine who was the start of all my trouble, back to the very beginning. "It's your fault," I told him plaintively, and sighed. It seemed that trouble found me when I was in a Gear. I waited for his reply that would never come.  
  
"Fei."  
  
"Doc!" I spun around to find Citan there. How could he always manage to sneak up behind me? Standing beside him was Sigurd.  
  
"Fei, come quick."   
  
I wondered what kind of urgency led them to drag me over to where the Yggdrasil was kept. We looked over the railing to the part of the Yggdrasil that was visible. Standing atop it was Bart.   
  
He was talking, or praying, I don't know which, to his dead father.  
  
" . . . As soon as I saw him, Dad, I knew he was just like me . . . " I heard him say. My irises widened in realization. He was talking about me! Gods, I *was* like him. Just another guy stuck in an awful situation. I looked helplessly at Doc and Sigurd.   
  
"It is not much that the young master has a friend his own age," Sigurd said. "Perhaps you can be like a friend to him."  
  
Suddenly I no longer saw Bart as a demon. I saw him as someone like me.  
  
"Well . . ." Sigurd smiled, "we'll just leave you here to ponder that."  
  
He and Doc walked away, and I realized something unusual. They were holding hands! I wondered how much I really *did* know about Doc.   
  
Turning back to Bart, I saw him standing there in silence. 'It's not much that the young master has a friend his own age,' Sigurd's words echoed in my ear. I watched him for a few more seconds, and then jumped over the railing. I walked up to where Bart was standing, careful not to disturb him, and concentrated on the golden braid that fell down his back.  
  
I stepped a little closer, when he noticed me and jumped. "Dammit Fei! You scared the hell outta me!" he mock-scowled.  
  
"I heard what you said," I began. "I didn't know . . ."  
  
"As I didn't know about you." He interrupted quietly, but still startling me. "Why didn't you tell me what a rough time you've had?"  
  
I didn't know. I said nothing.  
  
"Sorry 'bout what I said earlier . . ." We made eye contact, and for the first time, I clearly saw his one dark blue orb. "You're so damned like me," He reminisced on a completely different note. "I feel like I've known you for . . ."  
  
Somehow, a breeze had begun blowing, and I watched the tendrils of gold flow around his porcelain face.  
  
*Known you forever . . . seen you before perhaps . . .*  
  
*This life?. . . or another? . . .*  
  
There was an uncomfortable silence as we both struggled with memories blowing around us like the wind, flowing too fast to grasp at.  
  
"I-" we both started at the same time. Embarrassed: "You go first-" we said as simultaneously as the first statement.  
  
"Maybe we shouldn't talk," Bart said, his face closer to mine. "Maybe-" he held my face and kissed me. My eyes widened in bewilderment. So I did the thing I thought best.  
  
I kissed him back.  
  
I couldn't believe how I felt about this - it was so much different than what I felt for Alice or Elly. I loved them and wanted to protect them and all, but I had never felt pure lust. And I *certainly* had never been kissed.  
  
He was good at it too, and I wondered where he had become so talented with his mouth. I wasn't sure I wanted to know. All I wanted to know, for the time being, was the feeling of his soft lips on mine.  
  
Some several minutes later, I came back to my senses and realized that I was kissing Bart on the nose of the Yggdrasil.   
  
"Bart?" I murmured between kisses. "Doc told me . . ." Another kiss. ". . . that I should get some rest soon . . . it's getting late . . ."  
  
'Oh, you will," he said with a glint of something in his eye. "Later."  
  
He drew me in for another kiss, much more long and sultry than the others, and his knowing hands explored me as far as I allowed him. His body was pressed against mine, so I could feel his hardness. I wondered if he could feel mine, even through the large piece of armor I wore around my waist to protect the very thing.  
  
"Bart . . ."   
  
Bart murmured something incoherent, and pushed his tongue further into my mouth. I felt him bringing me down to my knees, and I knew exactly what he wanted to do next.   
  
Suddenly, this was going way too fast.  
  
"Bart, I really do have to go now!" I said rather forcefully. I pulled myself away from him as far as I could with his hands under my shirt.  
  
Which wasn't very far.   
  
I pulled his hands, as beautiful as they were, off my body. And then I ran. I didn't regret this as I lay in my bunk in the residential room.  
  
~  
*Crash!*  
  
I awoke with a jolt. What was going on!?   
  
"Geblers! They broke in!" Someone shouted, frightened.  
  
Everyone was rushing about in a general state of panic. I hurried out of the room. There I found Doc, as if he had been awaiting me.   
  
"Fei! Hurry and get into Weltall! Bart and the others are already fighting!"  
  
Great, I thought. Here we are back to that god-damned power thing again. "No."  
  
"But-,"  
  
"No."  
  
"Fei!"   
  
There was a pause, and Citan sighed. "I'm going to go fight with the others." He said finally, and ran to the hanger.  
  
I stood there a few minutes- an island of stillness in a sea of panicked energy. What was the point of fighting? It had ruined my whole village, and everything and anything I ever had.   
  
I watched a woman with several young children. She talked to them softly, trying to calm them and reassure them that everything would be okay soon. A feeling of sentiment filled me. And I realized.  
  
Bart and Citan and the others were fighting because they had reasons to fight, whatever those reasons may be. Perhaps to protect the civilians, to prove something to themselves, to save people they loved.  
  
And hell, it sounded corny. But it rang true. (After all, I *am* a very cliché character, so what would I care about being corny?) If I had a reason to fight, then it was all worth it in the end. Fighting wasn't exactly the most preferable way for me to spend my time, but if it was worth something, it was what I'd do.  
  
I started running to the hanger, as I smacked my head. Why didn't I figure this out a bit earlier? Perhaps before a state of potential disaster would have been nice. This wasn't a time for sarcasm; I would fight after all.  
  
There, in the midst of flashing red lights, I found Weltall, still stoic with cold adrenaline. "Now's your chance to release that energy," I told him.  
  
"On Geblers."  
  
Although I didn't like fighting, I was always comfortable inside a Gear. Maybe it was just Weltall being such a special one. We didn't even know just quite what he was made of - black boxes - they called the parts we couldn't recognize. Using his joysticks, I clanked over to the areas where there was fighting.  
  
Voices. Several voices, and one stuck out. More harassing than frightening. Target: Gebler. [1]  
  
"What are you children doing here? Don't you know a battle is going on?"  
  
"Stay away!"  
  
"What was that? Only naughty children speak to their elders that way. And naughty children deserve to d-"  
  
"Just what do you think you're doing?" I yelled from my Gear. [2]  
  
I gave the Swordknight no time to reply, knocking him down with a blast of Chi energy. I picked up the children in my mechanical right hand, and carried them to safety, leaving that child abusive bastard on the ground. Damn, that was easy. When you have a Gear like Weltall, you begin to have little respect for Swordknights.  
  
You also tend to get cocky.  
  
I hadn't noticed the other Gears following me until I was attacked from behind. Great: two Wandknights. Now what was I supposed to do? Together they could easily destroy me.  
  
"Fei? Is that you?"   
  
For the first time in my life, I was actually glad that Doc could sneak up behind me like that. He was in an emerald-black Gear that I had never seen before. Just like him to pick a wild Gear and tame it.  
  
"I'll explain later," I shouted, "but for now could you give me a hand?"  
  
~  
They were gone. And so seemed our energy. We rested by the hanger, tired but relieved. I looked around at Doc, Sigurd, and Bart, all somewhat fatigued.  
  
Well, all somewhat . . . dead.  
  
"I'm glad you came to your senses at last, Fei," Doc smiled weakly.  
  
"I knew you'd come around," Bart said, but without any perceptible effort. I wondered if he was mad at me, and realized I was probably right. I mean, I wasn't exactly the most pleasant person that day.  
  
I guess Sigurd and Doc sensed the tension, because they left suddenly. I watched them walk off, seeing Doc let down his hair and latch onto a willing Sigurd, once they *thought* they were out of sight.   
  
Bart's half-closed eye snapped open. "Woah," he whispered. "Did you just see that?" Then, more to himself: "What really *do* I know about Siggy?"  
  
"Bart, there's a lot of things we don't understand," I began seriously.  
  
"I completely agree with you, Fei. Take the lace panties in Sigurd's drawer, for instance."  
  
I ignored that remark and continued on. "We, as humans, aren't always sure what we want. And when we don't know," I spoke softer for effect, "we tend to run from."  
  
"Not for me. I'm *always* certain what I want and don't want, and times like when Sigurd tried to kill me for finding out what was in his *closet*, I'm definitely going to run away."  
  
"Bart? ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME?"  
  
"I guess . . . but I don't know why you want to be so serious all of a sudden." He paused. "But I do understand what you mean." He turned to confront me.  
  
"You're not . . . mad at me, are you?"  
  
A faint smile. "I was, but how could I stay mad at someone as beautiful as . . ." Bart trailed off and reached to touch my cheek, then suddenly pulled away.  
  
"Don't pull away like I'm some kind of prudish freak," I stated darkly.   
  
He reached out, and hesitated. "Dammit, Fei, how can I be sure?"  
  
I glared.  
  
"Not unsure if you're a freak," he started quickly, trying not to smile. "I mean not sure if you're going to run from me again." He paused uncertainly. "You don't think I was trying to seduce you, do you?"  
  
"I would've seduced you first if I thought that."  
  
He smiled, and swept me in for a close hug. "This time, you're mine for keeps."  
  
"Only on one condition."  
  
"What then?"  
  
"Well . . . what exactly . . . *is* in Sigurd's closet?"  
  
~  
*owari*  
~  
[1] ::mission impossible music begins to play::  
  
[2] the never failing voice of reason . . . to the rescue! ^_~  
  
~  
Tune in next time for the lemon continuation of this story. (C-chan and Kachie-chan dance around- *Yay! a lemon!*) Corny, wasn't it? I don't know who's more deranged; Fei or his crazy miko. =P  
~  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
